Nicolas Fillion - Nicolas (NOT NATHAN!!) Fillion

Let me begin by introducing myself. I am a postdoctoral fellow jointly appointed at the department of applied mathematics and at the department of statistics and actuarial sciences at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. I have a PhD dissertation in Philosophy, under the co-supervision of John L. Bell and Robert W. Batterman (now at U Pittsburgh). Robert M. Corless and I are currently putting the finishing touches on a book surveying some key concepts of numerical analysis (to be published with Springer soon).

My work focusses on the philosophy of mathematics, both pure and applied. I approach many of the problems of philosophy of mathematics as problems of philosophy of science, and in turns I like to think about the philosophy of science problems as problems of epistemology. This is the premise of both my PhD dissertation in philosophy and my MSc thesis in applied mathematics.

Besides my academic life, I spend a lot of time training in martial arts, especially Seikido and Judo. I also like to play volleyball and on occasion hockey. I also recently started to do hobby electronics, which is a lot of fun. I am a not too execrable chess player (I finished third in the London City Championship in 2007), but now I'm retired from chess.

My Erdös number is 4, obtained in a publication with John Bell and Molly Kao. Also, I like to say that according to the Philosophy Family Tree and the Mathematics Genealogy Project, I am the descendent of I. Schur, G.H. Hardy, G.F. Frobenius, A. Cayley, K. Weierstrass, E. Kummer, F. Bessel, C.F. Gauss, I. Newton, G. Galileo, N. Copernicus, on the side of John Bell. Moreover, I am the descendent of L. Sklar, P. Benacerraf, H. Putnam, H. Reichenbach, E. Noether, K. Jacobi, on the side of Robert Batterman. It find all of this pretty cool!